Which technique would be most effective for a second-grade teacher to incorporate into comprehension instruction?

• A. modeling sentence expanding to the students
• B. teaching students how to navigate and evaluate text
• C. having students engage in choral readings
• D. leading students through word-building activities

Answer: (B)

Understanding how to read with purpose by navigating text and evaluating what you read gives second graders the tools to grasp meaning, not just pronounce words. When students learn to navigate text, they use features like headings, captions, and diagrams to locate important information, understand the structure, and follow the sequence of ideas. Evaluating text involves asking questions like: Is the information supported by evidence in the passage? Is there a claim or opinion, and is it backed up by facts from the text? These practices help students monitor their understanding, make inferences, and determine reliability, which are all essential for true comprehension.

For example, with a short nonfiction passage about habitats, a teacher might guide students to use headings to find the part that explains what forest habitats provide for animals, then point to sentences that support the main idea. This kind of practice builds independent reading strategies that students can apply across many texts.

Other activities have value—for instance, modeling sentence expansion supports language and writing, and choral readings can improve fluency—but they don’t directly train students to extract meaning from text or judge its credibility. Word-building focuses on decoding rather than understanding how to interact with and critically evaluate what they read. Focusing on how to navigate and evaluate text directly strengthens the comprehension skills second graders need.